Ten years of the “war on terror”

Just days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush stated, “This crusade – this war on terrorism – is going to take a while, […] And the American people must be patient. I’m going to be patient. But I can assure the American people I am determined.”

A few days later, Bush said, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Ten NATO occupation soldiers were killed by Afghan resistance forces on June 7, marking the deadliest day on record for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Seven of those killed were U.S. soldiers. NATO reported that five troops were killed in an insurgent attack against a police training center, two soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing attack and one in a small arms attack. One day earlier, June 6, five NATO troops were killed in small arms fire attacks, a roadside bombing and a car crash. It is unclear if the car crash was related to a resistance attack.

Afghan police and onlookers gather around a bus which was fired upon by foreign forces in Kandahar April 12, 2010. Foreign forces opened fire on a passenger bus in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four civilians and wounding 18 others, a provincial official said. (REUTERS/Ahmad Nadeem)

Kandahar, Afghanistan – In the early morning hours of April 12, U.S. troops fired on a bus in Kandahar, Afghanistan, killing five civilians and wounding 18 more. The driver of the bus, Esmate, said, “They opened fire at us and I fell unconscious. The people who were killed were sitting in the seats just behind me.”

Another witness, Gul Mohammad, stated that the U.S. troops “opened fire for no reason.” A woman and a child were among those killed, according to local authorities.

An investigation into the killings of five Afghan civilians by U.S. forces on Feb. 12 has revealed that the U.S. tried to cover up its responsibility for the deaths.

On the night of Feb. 12, U.S. occupation forces entered a home in the Gardez district of Paktia province, east of the capital Kabul. The U.S. soldiers shot dead two Afghan men who were carrying weapons, then shot three pregnant women. The Afghans had been celebrating the birth of a baby. The U.S. initially claimed that the two men were Taliban fighters and that the three women were already dead when they arrived on the scene. In fact, the two men were a local police chief and a prosecutor.

Afghanistan: the days of colonial occupation are numberedInter-imperialist contradictions are being forced into the open by heroic forces of patriotic resistance.

No sooner had the polls closed in Afghanistan on 20 August than the leading representatives of the occupation regime declared this electoral farce a success. Nato’s Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, praised the Afghan people’s determination to build democracy, while the leaders of the US, Britain, Germany and France – the main participants in the imperialist predatory war against the Afghan people – rushed to pat themselves on the back for facilitating this alleged exercise in democracy.

The charade that passed for a presidential and provincial election in Afghanistan was staged on Thursday 20th August 2009. According to the information released by the occupation forces and the puppet Karzai regime, 40 candidates contested for the presidency, whilst 3,180 stood in the election for provincial councils. According to the same sources, of the 17 million Afghans eligible to vote, 5 million allegedly did so, that is, just under 30 per cent of the electorate entitled to vote. The resistance for its part has claimed that the actual turnout was less than 10 per cent. This not withstanding the deals that the Karzai authorities had done with some local sections of the resistance for a ceasefire on the polling day.